Connected: An Internet Encyclopedia
RFC 977 - 4.8. A Brief Word about the USENET News System

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### 4.8. A Brief Word about the USENET News System

In the UNIX world, which traditionally has been linked by 1200 baud dial-up telephone lines, the USENET News system has evolved to handle central storage, indexing, retrieval, and distribution of news. With the exception of its underlying transport mechanism (UUCP), USENET News is an efficient means of providing news and bulletin service to subscribers on UNIX and other hosts worldwide. The USENET News system is discussed in detail in RFC 850. It runs on most versions of UNIX and on many other operating systems, and is customarily distributed without charge.

USENET uses a spooling area on the UNIX host to store news articles, one per file. Each article consists of a series of heading text, which contain the sender's identification and organizational affiliation, timestamps, electronic mail reply paths, subject, newsgroup (subject category), and the like. A complete news article is reproduced in its entirety below. Please consult RFC 850 for more details.

          Relay-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site
          sdcsvax.UUCP
          Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83 SMI; site unitek.uucp
          Path:sdcsvax!sdcrdcf!hplabs!qantel!ihnp4!alberta!ubc-vision!unitek
          !honman
          From: honman@unitek.uucp (Man Wong)
          Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards
          Subject: foreground -> background ?
          Message-ID: <167@unitek.uucp>
          Date: 25 Sep 85 23:51:52 GMT
          Date-Received: 29 Sep 85 09:54:48 GMT
          Reply-To: honman@unitek.UUCP (Hon-Man Wong)
          Distribution: net.all
          Organization: Unitek Technologies Corporation
          Lines: 12

          I have a process (C program) which generates a child and waits for
          it to return.  What I would like to do is to be able to run the
          child process interactively for a while before kicking itself into
          the background so I can return to the parent process (while the
          child process is RUNNING in the background).  Can it be done?  And
          if it can, how?

          Please reply by E-mail.  Thanks in advance.

          Hon-Man Wong

Next: 5. References

Connected: An Internet Encyclopedia
RFC 977 - 4.8. A Brief Word about the USENET News System